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Valin

It’s been a long week in Lake Woebamagone. Turns out he stinks from the free throw line. And the hypocrisy of the left is suffering from fratricide, with so many collisions of liberal idiocy that there almost needs to be a whole new victim class for head-spinning. And that’s even before we get to the Associated Press problem with foreign criminals who lack pardons. And since we’re a week away from income tax day, there’s a couple of panels for that, too.

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SrWoodchuck

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Valin

A competitor wearing a kilt and standing on a barrel throws a ball between his legs during the 'brigaball' contest at the 36th Bundanoon Highland Gathering held in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia. David Gray/Reuters

I don't know the purpose of this...and I am not real sure I want to.

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Casino67

A competitor wearing a kilt and standing on a barrel throws a ball between his legs during the 'brigaball' contest at the 36th Bundanoon Highland Gathering held in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia. David Gray/Reuters

I don't know the purpose of this...and I am not real sure I want to.

Scottish method of passing a kidney stone.

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Valin

A competitor wearing a kilt and standing on a barrel throws a ball between his legs during the 'brigaball' contest at the 36th Bundanoon Highland Gathering held in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Australia. David Gray/Reuters

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SrWoodchuck

Below are six ideas, six “rules,” that the Godfather of community organizing packs between the covers of Rules, ideas that Obama’s imbibed hook, line, and sinker.

(1). Politicsis all about power relations, but to advance one’s power, one must couch one’s positions in the language of morality.

Community organizers are “political realists” who “see the world as it is: an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest” (12).

(2). There is only three kinds of people in the world: rich and powerful oppressors, the poor and disenfranchised oppressed, and the middle-class whose apathy perpetuates the status quo.

“The world as it is” is a rather simple world. From this perspective, the world consists of but three kinds of people: “the Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Have-a-Little, Want Mores.” The Haves, possessing, as they do, all of “the power, money, food, security, and luxury,” resist the “change” necessary to relieve the Have-Nots of the “poverty, rotten housing, disease, ignorance, political impotence, and despair” from which they suffer (18).

The Have-a-Little, Want Mores comprise what we call “the middle class.” While Alinsky believes that this group “is the genesis of creativity,” (19) he also claims that it supplies the world with its “Do-Nothings.” The Do-Nothings are those who “profess a commitment to social change for ideals of justice, equality, and opportunity, and then abstain from and discourage all effective action for change [.]” Alinsky remarks that in spite of their reputable appearances, the Do-Nothings are actually “invidious” (20).

This being so, they are as resistant to change as are the Haves.

(3). Change is brought about through relentless agitation and “trouble making” of a kind that radically disrupts society as it is.

(5). The organizer can never focus on just a single issue. He must move inexhaustibly from one issue to the next.

The organizer “must develop multiple issues,” (76) for “multiple issues mean constant action and life” (78). Alinsky explains: “A single issue is a fatal strait jacket that…drastically limits” the organizer’s “appeal,” but “multiple issues…draw in…many potential members essential to the building of a broad, mass-based organization” (120). The only “way to keep the action going” is by “constantly cutting new issues as the action continues, so that by the time the enthusiasm and the emotions for one issue have started to de-escalate, a new issue” has emerged “with a consequent revival” (161).